In Japan, a North Korean Campus Keeps National Identity Alive
...Roughly 800 miles from P'yongyang in Tokyo's leafy western suburbs, Korea University is an anomaly, an intellectual oasis in a society that distrusts and even despises the ethnic group it caters to—native Koreans loyal to P'yongyang. The institution has never received financial support or even official recognition from the government of Japan....
"The atmosphere now is very, very bad," said Kim Yang-Sun, an administrator at the university....
Mr. Kim's ancestors have been in Japan since its annexation of the Korean peninsula in 1910. When occupation ended in 1945, about 700,000 Koreans stayed on rather than return to their homeland, which was then sliding into a war that would eventually split the country into two bitterly opposed states.
These refugees were rendered stateless when Japan's postwar government ended the citizenship of former colonial subjects in 1947. Well-documented discrimination meant that many found the typical postwar route to prosperity in Japan—lifetime employment in large companies—effectively barred.
When Tokyo normalized relations with South Korea in 1965, Koreans in Japan had to choose essentially an administrative category—to opt for life as a South Korean with permanent residency or to leave the word "Korean" on their alien-registration cards and so become de facto North Koreans. Most declined South Korean citizenship—ironic given that the vast majority originates from the geographic south. South Korea was then a poor dictatorship backed by the United States, while North Korea, though offering little freedom, at least boasted the rhetoric of a "workers' state."
"Koreans in Japan were very poor and had no civil rights, so it was a big deal that there was a nation that regarded them as fellow compatriots, that gave them help, and funded this university," said Sonia Ryang, a professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Iowa.
Today at the university, the grandchildren of those first-generation Koreans struggle with profound identity issues. Many distrust the Kim Jong-il regime but remain loyal out of respect for their parents or the desire to preserve their cultural heritage....
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"The atmosphere now is very, very bad," said Kim Yang-Sun, an administrator at the university....
Mr. Kim's ancestors have been in Japan since its annexation of the Korean peninsula in 1910. When occupation ended in 1945, about 700,000 Koreans stayed on rather than return to their homeland, which was then sliding into a war that would eventually split the country into two bitterly opposed states.
These refugees were rendered stateless when Japan's postwar government ended the citizenship of former colonial subjects in 1947. Well-documented discrimination meant that many found the typical postwar route to prosperity in Japan—lifetime employment in large companies—effectively barred.
When Tokyo normalized relations with South Korea in 1965, Koreans in Japan had to choose essentially an administrative category—to opt for life as a South Korean with permanent residency or to leave the word "Korean" on their alien-registration cards and so become de facto North Koreans. Most declined South Korean citizenship—ironic given that the vast majority originates from the geographic south. South Korea was then a poor dictatorship backed by the United States, while North Korea, though offering little freedom, at least boasted the rhetoric of a "workers' state."
"Koreans in Japan were very poor and had no civil rights, so it was a big deal that there was a nation that regarded them as fellow compatriots, that gave them help, and funded this university," said Sonia Ryang, a professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Iowa.
Today at the university, the grandchildren of those first-generation Koreans struggle with profound identity issues. Many distrust the Kim Jong-il regime but remain loyal out of respect for their parents or the desire to preserve their cultural heritage....